Smart Grid News

Distribution Automation technology expected to grow in the coming years

SUBNET Solutions Inc | Tuesday, July 09, 2013

A new report explains that distribution automation (DA) technology is set to grow with the increase in smart grid deployments between now and 2020.

As utilities companies look to find more efficient ways to reliably distribute their electricity across the grid, DA technology is playing a more important role in monitoring and effectively controlling energy through the nation's infrastructure. A new report by Navigant Research predicts that this increase in smart grid deployment will result in DA technology revenue growing from its 2013 mark of $6.3 billion to more than $11.3 billion by the start of the next decade.

Ensuring reliability
"The global market for distribution automation is diverse, dynamic and growing," said senior research analyst at Navigant Research, Kristoffer Torvik. "As annual utility spending reaches and exceeds $10 billion in the coming years, opportunities will vary significantly by region and application. Although low voltage applications contribute most significantly to growth in DA, medium voltage automation constitutes the majority of the overall volume."

DA technology is important in ensuring that electricity is properly and effectively distributed throughout the grid by remotely monitoring energy flow. By being able to identify where an outage has occurred on the grid, this technology can reroute electricity flow to bypass where the outage took place and allow for the quick restoration of electricity to consumers. This also allows for utilities companies to identify where the outage took place so that they can quickly repair the grid infrastructure.

Learning from past policy
The report explained that part of the predicted surge in DA technology comes in learning from implementation policies from the last five years. Because intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) can collect and distribute information about the electric grid on which they operate, utilities have been able to better understand how to implement them based on the information they transmit.

These developments come as a new smart grid policy handbook was published by Global Data this month. It examines the emerging technologies in the smart grid field and discusses how to best implement them. Additionally, the handbook explains the grid infrastructure and political climate of a variety of different countries, so as to give companies a better understanding of each country's unique smart grid climate.

SUBNET helps utilities companies manage their grid by implementing effective solutions by utilizing IED technology. By relaying the information they collect to a single server, SUBNET allows utilities to more accurately monitor and manage their grid infrastructure.